25th July Actual Shopping, In This Heat?

To tell the truth I'm not as big a fan of Actual Shopping as some people, like Isabelle for instance. Now, despite trying to buy all this alpine stuff virtually from e-bay, time had now actually virtually run out. The penalty had been incurred of having to actually "go shopping".

I marched into the first outdoor emporium closely followed by Isabelle who presided over the inevitable colour matching anomalies. Given that today was, or at least felt like, the hottest whatever since whenever, it felt a bit mad asking "Do you have any thermal underwear in stock?"

At the next specialist store, I just handed the guy the list and said I need what it says here, here and here, which was easier. In this case the hot weather paid dividends as the market for ice climbing gear wasn't exactly at its peak. It felt embarrassing walking into the final port of call laden with bags from the competition round the corner. So to make them feel better I unloaded more money.

Luckily I'd just taken a wheelbarrow full of lead to the scrap merchants and received a wheelbarrow full of money in exchange, well... £36.00 to be exact. I told myself later that this made a big difference to the bill...